Swimming in my lane, trying to get used to the cut-off fins (the ones that ‘real’ swimmers use in swimming pools for reasons that elude me) I hear a voice from the next lane chant out a soulful, “One week!” This was a teacher friend of mine counting down the days before she has to return to school.
In this part of the world, at the start of term, there is a period when teachers are in school, and the kids are not. A golden opportunity you would think for harassed members of the profession to get themselves and their classrooms sorted out; to check through class lists and timetables; check room allocation, and generally prepare themselves for the forthcoming fray.
You might think that. But if you do then the chances are that you have not taught in the Catalan or Spanish school system. The Powers That Be consider time without kids to be the opportune time for meetings. And more meetings. And more.
In my experience, and I have been to thousands of meetings, literally thousands – political, cultural, and educational, and what my mother would have described in a catch-all term of which she was very fond, “sundry”. And I can truthfully say that the most soul destroying and quintessentially useless meetings that I have attended have been here in Catalonia. I must make an honourable exception for Departmental meetings, but ‘whole school’ affairs have been viciously pointless. And long. Very long.
In some educational administrative minds, The Meeting is an end in itself, and the content and participants’ response is secondary. Even as I type I can begin to resurrect my feelings of almost homicidal hatred of the agenda-less meanders that took away hours of my life, without compensating me with anything even remotely educationally positive.
A signal low point was a meeting on a Saturday morning (!) during which I was wearing my most pointedly casual clothes and throughout which I didn’t smile once. Not once from the beginning of the pointless charade to the eventual will-sapped end. I spoke only when I was directly addressed, and my answers were clipped to the point of being marginally rude. Not one smile. And I left at the earliest point I could and went home, smouldering because the meeting had been (surprise!) pointless.
But you are retired, I hear no one say. You no longer go to meetings. True. I no longer go to meetings that I have to go to; I go to the meetings I choose to go to.
The last meeting I went to was in our local city hall and was a gathering of individuals from the foreign communities, who had been invited by a general email to consider taking part.
We gathered at the appointed time outside the City Hall and were ushered into the Council Chamber where we were seated, shown a short film, and then joined by the alcaldesa (the mayor) and encouraged to give our opinions about our city. We were not a large group and we had widely differing proficiency in Spanish or Catalan, but we were listened to with courtesy and our points were considered and responded to. At least verbally.
One of the points that I made was about the state of the roads and especially those roads in the immediate vicinity of my house. Some of the road surfaces are composed of what seems to be rafts of concrete and there has been some movement of these plates. Round the corner from where I live one concrete plate in the road has risen so that there is a ledge lifted above the surface of the surrounding road. As the ridge is so pronounced, it means that a car driven at a normal speed feels as though it is encountering a substantial step in the road with consequent jarring. I had even taken a photograph of the ridge and was able to illustrate my point that the road was not only uncomfortable to drive on but also potentially dangerous.
I await further developments, and hope that it will not be the breaking of the axel of some unsuspecting car.
To be fair I have not attempted any follow up and anyone who expects anything to be done in the month of August must be a very green newcomer to the country!
The important thing is that a channel of communication has been opened with members of the foreign community and it is up to the individuals concerned in the initial meeting to make something of the opportunity offered by the City.
We were not, in any way a representative grouping. We had no mandate apart from our own interests. We had an opportunity, and we were speaking directly to the political power brokers in our own area.
We were listened to, and a group photograph was taken! An overture has been made and it is up to us to find out if it can be taken further.
I started this writing by concentrating on futility: the system grinding on, pointless and empty actions limiting expression.
But I end this piece with a new determination to make the channel of communication with the movers and shakers in my adopted city one that works for me and one that even might Get Something Done!
There is no point in being near levers if you don’t pull one or two occasionally and see what happens.
